Department of Chemistry Seminar-Patricia Clark
Patricia Clark
Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of Notre Dame
February 11, 2026 at 12:30 PM
Location: Chemistry 412
Title: “The impact of vectorial appearance on protein folding and efficient secretion of bacterial virulence factors”
Abstract: All proteins are synthesized from N- to C-terminus by ribosomes in the cell cytoplasm, but many must also be secreted from one end to the other across a membrane before folding to their native structures. This raises the possibility that protein sequences have evolved to support or suppress folding during protein synthesis, depending on the destination compartment. My talk will present recent experimental results that directly address two related questions regarding the regulation of protein folding in the cell: (1) To what extent can merely changing the direction of protein appearance (from N-to-C to C-to-N) change protein folding kinetics? (2) To what extent is a protein folding pathway encoded in the amino acid sequence, versus the spatiotemporal constraints imposed by the cellular environment?
